Highly anticipated: The new Call of Duty is expected to break its own sales record in 16 days. Source: Supplied

THE biggest entertainment release of the year could be six days away. It's not a film, it's not a book and it's not a TV show.

It's a new Call of Duty video game and it appears set to break its worldwide sales record of $1 billion in only 16 days.

And with Call of Duty: Black Ops II pre-sales flooding in, the games industry is asking for more respect for the medium outperforming traditional entertainment franchises by a big margin.

While once thought of as an entertainment sideline, video games are increasingly proving to be big business.

Australian consumers spent $1.09 billion at the film box office last year but, by comparison, they splashed out $1.5 billion on video games.

Interactive Games and Entertainment Association chief executive Ron Curry says the gaming industry does not "get the respect it deserves" given how popular the entertainment form has become, perhaps due to its rapid rise.

"The number of people identifying themselves as gamers is rising," Curry says. "But the general fact we're still labelling people 'gamers' shows that we're not giving the medium enough respect.

"We don't talk about TV watchers and book readers. We're still talking like gamers are a subset of the population even though we know through research that non-gamers are the subset."

Its 2010 release, Black Ops, broke records to earn $350 million in its first day on sale and $650 million in its opening week. That record was smashed this time last year by Modern Warfare 3 that earned $775 million in five days and hit the $1 billion mark by day 16, beating 3D blockbuster film Avatar by a day. It was a sales figure that led Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick to name the video game "the biggest entertainment launch of all time in any medium".

Some have questioned whether the shooting simulation can break the record for a third year in a row, but Black Ops II pre-sales appear to hint at its staying power.

US retail chain GameStop recently reported "the highest pre-orders in history" for the title, due in stores next Tuesday, while Amazon also quoted a 30 per cent pre-sales jump over last year.

The futuristic warfare game will face plenty of competition from other gaming "king hitters" though, Curry says. These include Microsoft's much-anticipated Halo 4, out yesterday, the recently released Assassin's Creed 3 and Far Cry 3, due December 4.

But Swinburne University communications and media lecturer Dr Mark Finn says these big-name, big-budget titles are also facing a challenge from highly sophisticated apps.

Finn says while video games are growing in popularity, some of their growth has spread to different devices, including tablet computers, mobile phones and Apple iPods.

He says the move to mobile gaming is paying dividends for developers, even when priced at less than $10 a title.

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